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“De-Casteing” India: How Dalit Women's Rights Civil Society Organizations Tackle Caste Based Socio-Political & Religio-Cultural Challenges
Abstract
Untouchability practices and caste-based discrimination and injustices are under
yet another siege. Over the past 50 years, India has seen a tremendous amount of
mobilization by vibrant lower caste women’s movements, which are committed to
challenging Indian caste society by securing social change and reducing caste-based
discrimination and injustice. However, as it was in colonial India1, the anti-caste
movements of today have to contend with socio-political and religio-cultural factors
that perpetuate caste-based injustices. This study examines the ways in which Dalit
women’s rights civil society organizations tackle four primary levels of caste-based
challenges in India: Hindu religion, family, community, and state/institutional.
... The term "ethnic" is derived from an ancient Greek word, ethnos meaning a number of 'distinct' people living and acting together (Tastsoglou, 2001). Ethnicity refers to a collection of people with a common socio/cultural identity such as language, religion, common cultural traits and common worldview (Boateng, 2000, Boateng, Matadamas, Sharma, & Winkler, 2015. Hence, these ethnic groups are social formations distinguished by the communal character (such as language and culture) of their boundaries (Nnoli, 1995). ...
Tiv-Jukun conflict has a long history of occurrence and reoccurrence over a period of time. In many instances, the conflicts have resulted in the destruction of lives and properties and internal displacement of civilians. The conflict has affected the relationship between the two ethnic groups who have been living together cordially. Previous studies on the conflict have not given proper attention to the role of communication in averting the conflict. This paper presents the root and remote causes of the Tiv Jukun conflict. Identifying the triggers and drivers of conflict between the two ethnic groups could help in bringing about a lasting solution to the crisis. Interviews were used to illicit the opinion of various demographics of both ethnic groups. Findings indicate among others competition over land resources and the desire for each ethnic group to attain political position for the benefit of its ethnic group in terms of socio-economic amenities such as education, healthcare services and employment. In order to promote a peaceful co-existence, the Nigerian government should implement the report of the previous committees, a proper sharing formula between the two ethnic groups and address the issue of citizenship rights constitutionally.
... The term "ethnic" is derived from an ancient Greek word, ethnos meaning a number of 'distinct' people living and acting together (Tastsoglou, 2001). Ethnicity refers to a collection of people with a common socio/cultural identity such as language, religion, common cultural traits and common worldview (Boateng, 2000, Boateng, Matadamas, Sharma, & Winkler, 2015. Hence, these ethnic groups are social formations distinguished by the communal character (such as language and culture) of their boundaries (Nnoli, 1995). ...
The present paper is purported to examine the Indian caste system as the unique ideology of exclusivist doctrine which has its distinctive and continuous impact on India's social, political and cultural life. Unfortunately, even in the post-independence India, caste is a criterion of making one as the part of a society/ community. In fact, caste may be one of the prime considerations with which we look at each other. It implies the idea that one's " being " is constituted and reconstituted by the other and the other in turn constitutes the " me ". What is central to the suggestion is that even today, caste has not lost its ontological status. Philosophically considered, they are the explicit manifestation of two kinds of ontologies that this tradition and culture has brought forth; the first one may be called as the ontology of permanence and the second may be called the ontology of impermanence. Thus, there are two conceptions of reality in this culture and the philosophies and world-view in this tradition may be categorized in terms of these two categories of ontologies. The radical question is whether the offered normative doctrines, unquestioningly practiced in India, provide the liberal political ideas of freedom and equality devoid of their casteist and its metaphysical trappings? This is the most formidable, intellectual, cultural, political and social anxiety that post-independence India faces with regard to the humanization of Indian societies.
This book is an examination of gender in South Asia and its intersection with other social variables like caste and class. It spans a wide canvas in terms of different social classes, ranging from elite to Dalit women of India, and takes material from ancient texts and modern media, literature and ethnographic materials forming a historical discourse. There is an appraisal of what feminism means in the Indian context and the cross–cultural construction of patriarchy that varies in its manifestations across time and space. The readers are taken on a journey that shows how gender can only be understood in its social and historical context and as a dynamic and performative concept that emerges out of both collective imaginations and social realities. The use of descriptive and narrative style makes the book readable and enjoyable to both academic and non-academic readers.
The historical and conceptual exclusions of the bourgeois public sphere have prompted theorists to consider alternative models. The three non-deliberative models examined in this article reinscribe the suppression of difference of the bourgeois public sphere. A deliberative model of the public sphere can value difference if one articulates its normative grounds through thin norms and if one recognizes the appearance of deliberation across a multitude of dialectically related publics.
